A coupled method for dynamic analysis of offshore floating wind turbine system

A coupled dynamic analysis method is introduced for numerical simulation of floating wind turbine systems in this paper. A numerical code, which has been developed to perform couple hydrodynamic analysis of floating body together with its mooring system, is extended to collaborate with wind turbine simulator to evaluate the interactions between wind turbine and its floating base. To verify the coupled method, a dynamic response analysis of a spar type floating wind turbine system (NREL offshore-5MW baseline wind turbine) is carried out separately by the coupled Morison method and radiation-diffraction theory. Numerical results and comparison are presented. It turns out that this coupled method is competent enough to predict hydrodynamic performance of floating wind turbine system. The numerical results derived in this study may provide crucial information for the design of a floating wind turbine in the near future.